Saturday, May 24, 2008

Dejavu . . .

Today marks my first official day of serious preparation for our mid-year exam. I am getting a shocking sense of dejavu. I suppose it is not surprising, considering that I have spent more than seven years of my life in full-time study up to this point in time.

This exam is nototious for being ridiculously difficult and has a traditional failure rate of close to 50%. In other words, of all the intelligent and hard-working people in the room, just under half of them will get a mark that it below what the medical school thinks should be a technical pass.

(Note for all of the non-medical school attendees out there - medical school marks do not correspond to excellence as a doctor. Some people who get average marks turn out to be excellent doctors, and some students who get extremely high marks on written examinations would not know how to talk to a patient if they were locked in a room with one. Of course, some people who fail should not be doctors, and some people who excell will save us all. But I digress.)

Of course, the school has the option of scaling the marks so most people technically pass and the rest just have to work extra hard to ensure that they pull up their mark at the end of the year. I have a sneaking suspicion that everything we go through in medical school is helping us prepare for when we are going through life as a trainee doctor. Another day, another hoop to jump through. Dejavu. ;)

I am just going to try my best. I'm surprisingly relaxed, which is great. Now off to review my notes. Wish me luck.